Put a little comfort in your cooking

Tuesday

Jan 22, 2013 at 5:48 PM

Ahh, comfort food. The very phrase makes us feel better, conjuring up an image of sitting down to a plateful of something warm, filling and delicious.

Page H. Onorato

Ahh, comfort food. The very phrase makes us feel better, conjuring up an image of sitting down to a plateful of something warm, filling and delicious.Although food that brings us happiness has been around ever since Oop munched down on the first hairy mammoth leg, the expression didn't become part of our culture until the 1970s. Its definition involves nostalgia along with calories, flavor and quantity, but not necessarily nutrition. You wouldn't exactly call spinach salad with sprouts and edamame comfort food, now would you? Don't get it mixed up with soul food, though. Soul food is comfort food, to be sure, but conversely, all comfort food is not soul food. Pizza, for example, fits the comfort category for many people, but it's certainly not soul.And while we Southerners pride ourselves on our comfort foods, we don't have squatting rights on it. But we do on soul, because its roots are in the history of the African-American population. African slaves brought their cooking traditions with them from their homeland, adapting old ways to new ingredients such as collards, sweet potatoes, black-eyed peas, cabbage, corn and corn meal, local fish and game and every part of the pig. We associate the emergence of soul food on the culinary scene with the Civil Rights Movement while comfort food is definitely ingrained from childhood and is indigenous to every region of our country.American's top 10 comfort food list according to Food Network includes the following: pizza, biscuits, fries, spaghetti with red sauce, chicken soup, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches and burritos. Taste of Home's roster starts with turkey pot pie, followed by macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, beef stew, fried chicken, chicken soup, lasagna, tuna casserole, pot roast and chicken and dumplings.It all sounds soothing, doesn't it, except I never considered tuna casserole anything except what to fix when you're out of money and all you have on the shelf is a can of tuna fish. Personally, I can't exactly cuddle up to a plateful of tuna casserole.What would be on a strictly Southern list of the 10 top comfort foods? Certainly fried chicken would be included, and maybe hot biscuits with sausage gravy. We'd want macaroni and cheese, of course, and mashed potatoes with more gravy. Chicken and dumplings and chicken pie would make the cut. Our part of the South would go for collards cooked with fat back, pinto beans and corn bread. Don't forget the grits with, yep, even more gravy, preferably the red-eye variety. Oh, but, Page, you've left out our favorite — good old dessert. Nothing cheers you up and comforts you like something sweet.OK, nobody would argue with this list. Here goes the top 10, not necessarily in order of popularity: banana puddin', peach cobbler, chess pie, pecan pie, sweet potato pie, lemon meringue pie, birthday bread, coconut cake, caramel cake and everybody's granny's old reliable pound cake. Oops, I forgot fried pies. That makes 11.If you lived in New England, you'd soothe your feathers with chowder and clam cakes, or a big pot of made-from-scratch baked beans. Meatloaf and brats are big chill-chasers in the Midwest, where they no doubt warm their gullets with that tuna casserole, too.Texans like their comfort hot, as in firecracker Pedernales chili or taco soup, and sweet, as in chocolate sheath cake. Gulf State folks belly up to jambalaya for their jollies, crayfish pie and pralines. West Coasters lose the blues over cioppino (fish stew), smoked salmon, sourdough bread and, maybe, but I doubt it, Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat. Hawaiians? Believe it or not, Spam is the meat that soothes the savage breast in the land of the luau, although you'll find the locals lined up daily for the Hawaiian Plate Lunch, one of President Obama's favorites. Its main elements are two scoops of rice, a serving of macaroni-mayonnaise salad and a meat side such as loco moco — a hamburger patty with a fried egg or breaded pork, loaded with gravy.In Alaska they eat blubber, I hear. It's probably better for you than the plate lunch.I'm glad I live in the South, where comfort food is king and soul food is queen, and I don't have to eat Spam or tuna casserole or Rice-a-Roni when I feel the need for a warm fuzzy dinner.Just bring on the chicken and dumplings, with a side of collards and a big slab of corn bread.Page H. Onorato is a retired teacher.

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